Design thinking vs design history:
Why it matters to future-makers
As innovators, we rarely look back. After all, the rearview mirror is only for reversing. Design thinking methods and processes help us to get away from our analytical traps about the past, that can often lead to incremental, rather than breakthrough innovation. These approaches also offer a common language to work collaboratively. But with all that goodness, are we missing something? Should design history also matter to future-makers?

Our recent focus on design thinking really got its momentum from IDEO and the dSchool at Stanford. A school of thought that brought human-centered approaches to an otherwise more engineering or industrial design focused discipline. It also provided non-designers in business and government a way to tackle innovation challenges with a ‘prototype’ mentality. This enabled more perspectives and flex than the tyranny of traditional business planning or formal strategy development would allow.Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Business Model Innovation:
Avoiding the 'Official Future' TrapBusiness model innovation differs from traditional product and service innovation. It focuses on creating a new value proposition, which, at times, can also become a game changer. This positions organizations proactively and creates a sustainable advantage. Often more than a snappy new product design, it brings a fundamental shift in how the organization (and sometimes the sector) operates. Because of this, business model innovation hits the heart and soul of the organization.Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Open Innovation: Co-creation StrategiesWhile businesses increasingly respond to compressed innovation cycles, governments are pressured to evolve their organizations to one of more responsive and cost-effective service delivery. As new strategies emerge, organizations need to make a shift in their states and align their operations to respond to a new reality.

Whether the terms used are innovation or business transformation change agents are tasked with creating a roadmap for the future.
So what tools do leaders use to make sense of these changes and build a blueprint for moving forward? Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Creating environments that support innovationinnovationcultures spoke with Andrew Kim, Design Researcher at Steelcase WorkSpace Futures to discuss what factors they were exploring in creating work environments that support collaboration and innovation. His background is in human-centered design and innovation planning and he is part of the core innovation group that focuses on innovation in the far timeframe. What follows are some of the big ideas they are working on.Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Adapt or Die: The Darwinism of AppleLove, hate, envy, accept. Coming to terms with Apple’s dominance is not easy for everyone. There are mixed feelings, and allegiances that run deep in the tech world. However, there is no denying the impact Apple has had on innovation culture, not just in the realm of technology, but across all industries. Competitors and admirers alike are all rushing to emulate the creative model at the core of Apple’s success.

Myths and Facts on InnovationTeam group work, open spaces, coffee – these seem to be unquestioned elements of innovation teams and most office work in general. But are these just artifacts that support our myths about the workplace? Innovation cultures editorial director, Teresa Di Cairano, chatted with Philippe De Ridder—innovation consultant and co-leader of Intervista’s Innovation Camp—as well as dug up some research on whether these are myths or facts. Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Ask the expert: The Future of WorkIntervista spoke with thought leader and futurist Stowe Boyd to get his take on the Future of Work. What follows is Stowe’s deep insight on work in a postnormal economy as well as a sneak preview on trends and tools he will be exploring in our upcoming Future of Work seminar.

What are some of the key forces impacting the future of work?I think there are three forces transforming the world of work today. The tempo of competition and complexity has risen to a new ‘beyond chaotic’ pace, and it is increasing, pushing the economy over a threshold into a new economic era, the post normal, in which the primary response of business will be the adoption of a fast-and-loose style of business operations. Fast-and-loose is not meant to suggest shadiness or sloppiness, but instead agility, resilience, and a predisposition toward experimentation, innovation, and action, as well as a seemingly paradoxical loosening and increase of the social connections between people.Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

The Future of Workspaces with TD BankWe interviewed Mike Loftus, VP Workspaces at TD Bank’s Information Technology group. He is an energetic and innovative leader that runs Workspace Services where he is responsible for the technologies that TD employees use to communicate, collaborate and be productive. He is also deeply involved in Flex Workplace, which is a real estate led program that is changing TD’s physical Workplace. “Ultimately, the Workspace Services program is trying to drive standardization, flexibility and efficiency in the tools, and our technologies are there to help staff really exploit the new real estate capabilities and enable the future of work,” says Mike Loftus.

As I prepared for the interview, a few things came to mind. First we are dealing with a large bank here and probably as traditional an organization as they come. Secondly, along with the iconic buildings and other physical artifacts that communicate trust, there must be a certain baggage that comes with the work culture.

The New Aesthetics of WorkOver the past decade, how we work and where we work have undergone dramatic change. Telework has become so commonplace that the unlovely term no longer is used. We are simply working wherever we are: at home, at the café, at the airport, and in the office cafeteria. We are spending less time in cubicles as companies seek to unlock creativity and innovation through open space designs, and rethinking the rationale for being in the office, at all.

Ubiquitous connectivity and mobile devices have become the norm, allowing us – or inducing us – to stay always on, always connected.Read full article by Stowe Boyd

Organic Ideas May be Better for YouMuch has been written recently about the limitations of brainstorming as a useful technique for creativity and innovation. Brainstorming techniques try to pull ideas out of people’s heads, often by trying to get them to think in non-linear ways leading to more random associations and arguably better - or at least more - ideas. Why the need for more creativity?Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Design we love and why we do
At a shopping excursion with my then fifteen-year-old fashionista daughter, she not only pronounced her unending love for a pair of Jeffrey Campbell shoes but finally declared “I want to marry these shoes!”. I probably spend too much time trying to persuade my busy customers that they really should separate themselves from their money.

While, we know design matters for creating innovative offerings people want to buy, I wonder what is it that makes us love the design of some products and services more than others?Read full article by Teresa Di Cairano

Agility and innovation – what do they really mean? Most will probably agree that information technology is at the very least an accelerator – making it possible to respond faster and faster. Organizations benefit from this by increasing agility and shortening their reaction to changing environments.

The main benefit of IT transformation initiatives – which rest on a backbone of technology innovation - is often targeted at gaining agility through overcoming legacy costs and constraints. But does this necessarily bring with it the kind of game-changing business innovation that creates sustained competitive and strategic innovation?

In the last decade or so, IT professionals have borrowed from the discipline of architecture with the goal of creating more responsive IS services. However, there may be something else to learn from the field
of design.
Leading practices in product design are undergoing a shift from
designer-led approaches to more client/user-centric ones. To get there, design researchers often use ethnographic techniques. Ethno…what? Ethnography is a branch of anthropology that studies the social behavior of people within a culture. So what does ethnography have to do with information technology professionals?Read full article by Mick Kahan & Teresa Di Cairano

Can your team adapt when opportunities and conditions demand it?
In broader terms, does your organization have the ‘right stuff’ to innovate successfully? This should be among the most important questions leaders ask as they assess their organizations’ readiness for the changing demands of operational success today.

Business Architecture is essentially about creating and continually refining the business artifacts that allow for appropriate automation of business and technical processes. In terms of the well-known Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture, Business Architecture encompasses the top two rows, the Scope (contextual) row, and the Business Model (conceptual) row.

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